Just over a year ago, Abdul Fattah Tameem, his wife, Ghazweh Aljabooli

Just over a year ago, Abdul Fattah Tameem, his wife, Ghazweh Aljabooli, and their five children landed at the Des Moines airport and became the first refugees from Syria’s ongoing war to settle in Iowa. During their first summer in America, like this scene at a pool near their new apartment, each step felt momentous. The first shopping trip to Walmart, the kids playing in a pool and taking the bus to school, all put the horrors of war further behind them—the years without sufficient food, the bombs that destroyed their house and ruined their city of Homs, the month they camped out in the desert at the Jordanian border, trying to escape. Months later, as the family began to acclimate to life in America, President Trump took office and issued an executive order that would prevent more families like them from coming to the U.S. As a result, something new crept into the family’s life in their safe haven: fear. “I’m worried they’ll send us back,” Ghazweh said in January, right after Trump’s initial order. She had heard rumors that Syrian children already in the U.S. would not be able to attend school, and that families could be deported: “We’re so scared we’ll have to go back to the war.” Despite the administration’s order—which was halted by court rulings, then reworked and has been partially enacted by a June 26 Supreme Court decision—Ghazweh and her family continue to build a new life far removed from their old one. They are working to construct their own American dream. Photograph by Danny Wilcox Frazier (@dannywilcoxfrazier)—@viiphoto for TIME

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Just over a year ago, Abdul Fattah Tameem, his wife, Ghazweh Aljabooli last updated: August 31st, 2017 by